Scientists have found that cotton may even
clean up oil spills better than polypropylene
fibers, which are the usual material for sop
ping up such waste. A few years ago research
ers showed that cotton absorbed more crude
oil in a saltwater bath. Other researchers had
already demonstrated that cotton worked as
well as polypropylene in freshwater -and cot
ton is biodegradable. Recently a Texas firm
began marketing InstaSorb, a cotton sorbent
that oil companies have successfully used to
clean up spills in lakes and rivers.
Crane & Co. of Dalton, Massachusetts, has
been turning cotton rag into high-quality
stationery and paper for U. S. currency for
more than a century. Tim Crane, a sixth
generation papermaker, recently came up
with a novel idea for recycling the 13.6 million
pounds of money taken out of circulation each
year, which would otherwise end up in land
fills. "I said, let's just grind it up, add water,
and see what it looks like," says Tim, who has
turned more than 750 million dollars' worth of
discontinued bills into stationery called Old
Money. "As it turns out, it's a rather pleasing
color of green."
National Geographic,June 1994